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One Year Later, "Dead" XP Still Going Strong
snydeq writes "Microsoft pulled the plug on Windows XP a year ago today, no longer selling new copies in most venues. Yet according to a report from InfoWorld, various downgrade paths to XP are keeping the operating system very much alive, particularly among businesses. In fact, despite Microsoft trumpeting Vista as the most successful version of Windows ever sold, more than half of business PCs have subsequently downgraded Vista-based machines to XP, according to data provided by community-based performance-monitoring network of PCs. Microsoft recently planned to further limit the ability to downgrade to XP now that Windows 7 is in the pipeline, but backlash against the licensing scheme prompted the company to change course, extending downgrade rights on new PCs from April 2010 to April 2011."
This trend will stop when Windows 7 is introduce.
Mark it on the wall.
After we took a look at Vista, Who Knew XP would look so good? Actually XP was never "bad", and it's pretty stable considering all the garbage people install on their PCs. Although people say (in surveys) that they don't like "renting" their OS software, I (and my corporate clients) wouldn't mind at all paying a yearly fee for ongoing maintenance of XP, or, perhaps for a new 3 or 5-year license with "support". And since the Web is so good for self-support for some time now, we would just be looking for maintenance releases and security updates. And we already "rent" many of our applications, from security suites to corporate apps with support. Microsoft would benefit because they would effectively get "us" to be purchasing OS licenses just the same as if we bought Windows 7 (or whatever). The resellers would be losers of course, coz we wouldn't be buying so much new hardware, but that's not especially "our" problem. For business use, anything over 1.6 GHz (sometimes even slower!)/512MB RAM or so is just icing on the cake for XP. It runs pretty well in that minimum configuration. It would be much cheaper than a change to a new version of Windows. And it does EVERYTHING we need, doesn't it? ARE YOU LISTENING, MICROSOFT?
Naturally businesses do not want to migrate to a more expensive OS. XP works.
Clearly, Microsoft used worcestershire sauce as an embalming fluid.
I've been defending Vista for some time now since it worked just fine on my laptop. Now, however some sort of incompatibility between Vista, Firefox and Zone Alarm keeps freezing my browser. It's not happening on my XP systems. And suddenly, within the past couple of weeks, even IE is freezing. So I'm building a new system for my wife and be sure that I'm going with XP.
... I upgraded to vista on my gaming box (for dx10 and to experiment with it) but on my main box there would be no way for me to do that, due to several things I'm using not having drivers for vista at all (or only for vista32). I guess we'll see how things are with windows 7, if the virtual XP included is going to be able to run XP drivers directly then maybe I would consider upgrading, but I kind of doubt that is likely as if you allowed the virtual box direct access to the hardware then it would be easy for it to bring down the whole system.
-- the cake is a lie
"the most successful version of windows ever sold"
sold (or really licensed) != used
The user base is never the same size as sales or downloads.
Developers: We can use your help.
XP dead? I think even netcraft confirms it isn't, despite what Microsoft would like. The latest advertisement from the local Microcenter is covered left and right in computers that are listed as being "downgradeable" to Windows XP. This is obviously something people and businesses want or need.
Can we do away with the "XP still alive" stories? At this point "everyone" knows that people are going to continue using XP for as long as possible. The other people with Software Assurance or other Microsoft volume licensing programs are going to stay on XP just until they can plan a migration to Windows 7. A small minority will finally make the shift to Linux, and a couple people will slurp up the Jobs flavored Kool-Aid and justify spending significant amounts of money to be locked into a completely proprietary hardware/software "solution".
I think he is biased (and hypocritical), loud, and annoying. I do not think he is funny nor intelligent.
However, I find your criticism to be lacking for various reasons.
XP is going to die rather quickly once one or more of the following happen: 2.5TB or bigger hard disks drop below $100 (no GUID partition table support in XP), applications make good use of more than 4GB RAM (XP64 driver support "could be better"), USB3 devices become available in mass quantities (no USB3 support in XP), IPv4 addresses run out and major ISPs offer IPv6 access (IPv6 support in XP is incomplete and lacks a UI), Duke Nukem Forever is released for Windows 7 only.
(everyone who Knows Better will know I'm talking about most users, IT shops, etc - not the technical "merits")
Microsoft is finally getting bit by cultivating and preying on the culture of Good Enough. XP supports current hardware, runs current apps, ISVs are still writing for it. Users are comfortable with it, it handles games well (hey, check out the number of Big Name Games that require DX10), and while it's a security nightmare, most competent shops know enough to be able to keep their machines STD-free.
Vista is a host of new problems, support issues, and sucks on the same hardware XP zips on. Windows 7 isn't officially out yet... and when it is, most IT shops are going to wait. They'll poke it with a stick, sniff it like a dog, and rather it's a genuine improvement or not, they're not going to hop on it until they have to.
XP is the new BSD. It'll be "dying" for the next five to ten years. It's going to take a massive paradigm shift* in computing to get rid of it.
* I don't mean quad cores or eight-way cores or 64 gigs of ram for a nickel. I mean something equivalent to a massive rendering farm running an OS with a pile of APIs that'll securely handle every windows (and mac, while we're fantasizing) application ever written, with a battery life measured in decades. Said hardware would be the size of an iPhone, even easier to use, and you'd be able to buy them in vending machines at bus stations for $1.25. I mean that kind of paradigm shift.
... a massive "Thank-you, you dumb bastards."
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
I'd be happy if people stop using IE6 or even IE7, I'd prefer if they switch to something better then IE in the process, but I guess that's asking for to much.
New things are always on the horizon
In fact, despite Microsoft trumpeting Vista as the most successful version of Windows ever sold, more than half of business PCs have subsequently downgraded Vista-based machines to XP, according to data provided by community-based performance-monitoring network of PCs.
That's not necessarily mutually exclusive. There have always been a substantial number of businesses which don't see a compelling reason to upgrade when a new version of Windows comes out. 85% of those machines are used primarily for word processing, after all, something which has been "good enough" for a couple of decades. I worked for a company which was still happily using Windows for Workgroups in 2001. Add the people who always wait for Service Pack 2 and you're at a pretty big percentage of the market.
According to unofficial sources, the planned "End of Life" for Windows XP will be in December 21 of 2012.
I'm cheap, but after having experience dealing with Vista on a support level, frankly, you can pry my retail copy of XP out of my cold, dead hands.
With Linux, I know I can still go download updates for some ridiculously old distribution like Fedora Core 3 and that it will still work. It will never be sunset and I'll always be able to download it. Killing off an operating system when it's no longer profitable to keep it alive, despite the concerns of customers, is a reason why community-developed open source software is better.
Forget regular XP, forget Vista, forget 7, heck even forget the Linux. Windows FLP is the stripped down version you want. Doesn't even require a Genuine Advantage check.
A couple of months ago, my brother has his XP installation is such a bad shape that I had to come over to fix it. While we were walking on the street we started discussing about XP vs. Vista and how much Vista sucks.
After a few minutes a random stranger on the street barges in on the discussion how much Vista really sucked. Yes people, a total stranger chipped in on a discussion to say his opinion on Vista. It simply sucks that much.
Windows 7 will probably be a lot better since it is pretty much impossible to do worse. Vista simply feels like a big step back. It's hard to really describe the flaws of Vista but using it simply feels so annoying.
Personally, I am wondering. What the hell is wrong with Vista? I know it sucks since I suffer using it but it simply feels so hard to describe. What made Vista suck?
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
Sometimes I wonder how much of the resistance to the new Microsoft OSes is XP being good or the OS being bad.
The truth is, computers are still a relatively recent thing; this is the first major, major OS change in a world largely dependent on the well-being of its various corporate networks; the only similar major transition I can think of is OS 9 to OS X, but Macs weren't (and aren't) as widespread in corporate, industrial, or small business environments.
So how much of this resistance to change is due to the fact that we've never dealt with this kind of major change before in such a massive environment (and don't have the infrastructure to deal with it well), and how much of it is just people clinging to XP?
http://www.tenjou.net/
"OSX is $129"
You realize how ridiculous this is when part of the cost of running OSX is the hundreds or thousands of dollars extra an Apple computer costs?
Le français vous intéresse?
Maybe this is a backlash against being milked by the upgrade gravy train.
I've used Vista for a short while and also some users (bought new PCs preloaded).
I, as the support person, hated it because it took me longer to find my way around it. It is not intuitive for people used to where MS used to place things. I'd say it was similar to going from OS9 to OSX in Mac userland. After a handful to users buying into Vista and then coming to lots of problems in terms of figuring out how to use it, I started recommending downgrades for their and mine sanity's sake.
Then I landed a corporate job, and our policy (I set my own, with advice from HQ in the UK) is to stick with XP. My primary reason is that my users are mostly set in their ways, and Vista from UI perspective will be a disaster. The other reason in that some legacy apps will probably cause problems to run. They even cause problems in XP.
So, when I order a PC from Dell, I always specify XP as the OS. It comes pre-installed.
On a side note, I also downgrade Office 2007 to 2003 Pro, again for usability reasons. I have Select Licenses, so I am "legally" entitled to.
Long live XP.
Why is it that M$ can simply put out an OS with a new face and a couple of new features and sell it as a new product, yet no one wonders about how they are being limited to their freedom of choice by their obvious attempt to control the market with crap and make you happy to pay for it. I think it's funny watching the monkeys pay for crap they already paid for and love paying way over it's value for it. M$ research is paid by the users who complain their asses off and still use their crap, they exploit the idiots who don't understand technology, and they progress through feeding off other company's devolpments and buying it through the above exploits. If you ask me, I'm happy MS sucks ass and idiots pay for their crap, it keeps proving that real programmers and technology enthusiests know more than multi billion dollar companies and their feeble attempts to pretend they know technology and how it works with people. Perhaps if M$ charged and made money other than from simply forcing us to use techology due to their foothold in the market and started putting out what worked and allowing individuals to improve on the techologies, we could truely say they are a proper and fair monopoly who is really looking out for the people and making things work.
Just put it out there, if your wrong... you learn, if your right, others learn.
Anyone who touts User Account Control as a downside to Vista is certifiably dumb.
First off, if it annoys you that much, you can disable it.
Second, the reason it asks you for permission to continue at "anything but the simplest tasks" is a defense mechanism. It allows you oversight into the internal workings of your operating system. In XP you'd double-click something -- give it permission to run -- and after that it could totally ravage your operating system if it felt like it (assuming that you had the privileges to ravage the operating system yourself, something most home users have as they are local admins).
In Vista, when you give that same program permission to run, Vista sees that it's trying to ravage the operating system, and gives you a pop-up, informing you of what the program is requesting permission to do, and allowing you, with this new knowledge, to allow or deny continued action.
Additionally, the User Account pop-ups offer a convenient way for administrators to allow users to perform tasks normally exclusive to administrators. Rather than logging the user out and logging in as themselves, or exiting the program, using "Run As..." and then entering their credentials, the administrator can simply enter their username and password into the UAC pop-up, and thus allow the process to continue under the pretense of the currently logged in user.
To complain about UAC and say that, that was your reason for switching away from Vista shows that either you don't understand the concept of configuring an operating system to meet your specific usage needs, that you don't understand a good operating system security measure, that you are stupid, or that you were biased going in, and were looking for the very simplest thing to tout as the reason Vista is bad.
Personally I used Vista from the time that it went gold, to the time that the Windows 7 RC came out. I couldn't've been happier. I gamed, I power-used, I tinkered...100% satisfied with Vista.
Well, ignoring your exaggeration for a moment, the better point you could have made is that OS X comes out with a new major version a lot more often than windows does, so people wanting the latest and greatest have to buy more OS X versions in the same time a Windows user upgrades.
-mrxak
Onions Will Kill You
Due to high customer demand, the right to downgrade 1 to 0 was also continued.
And in case you need it, Windows 111 base 2 will be a free downgrade to Windows 000.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
people will still run Windows XP Pro in Virtual Machines just to run "legacy software" that does not run on Windows Vista, Windows 7.0, etc.
VirtualBox by Sun just reached version 3.0.0 and supports Windows XP, Vista, and 7.0 as both host and guest operating systems. It can even run DOS virtual machines, but has no addons support for DOS.
For DOS support most people just use DOSBox but it has no printing support. For example Wordperfect 5.1 for DOS runs in it, but since it has no printer support, just select Postscript for a printer and then use Ghostscript or some other Postscript program to drop the Postscript data file on to print it out. After Microsoft went to the Windows NT and up and left the Windows 9X platform, it broke a lot of DOS applications. DOSBox is cool, as it even supports Tandy 1000 standards so that means those DOS video games that selected CGA or Tandy graphics can be played in Tandy mode. That was before EGA and then later VGA was invented.
Retrocomputing is more than just a fad, for some that have "legacy software" issues they have to use older hardware and older operating systems, or run older operating systems in virtual machines and/or emulators.
The cost of upgrading "legacy software" to Windows Vista or even Windows 7.0 standards is too high and too difficult for most software companies, plus Windows Vista broke a lot of software development tools including some old versions of Visual Studio as recent as 2002 or 2003. There is a lot of software that businesses need, that cannot be converted to run on Vista or 7.0, which is why Microsoft has that XP Virtual Machine, but they futzed up the XP Virtual machine and it is not 100% XP compatible. So I am guessing virtual machines like VirtualBox, VMWare, etc will be used to run XP in a virtual machine for better compatibility.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Q to you all: Can I still activate new XP installation?
- I haven't even tried, been happy with them (servers) running Linux OS since day 1
I got few servers some years ago with XP Pro license sticker on them (that doesn't have any expiration date)
- NOTE: these licenses have never been activated.
So, when would be the last date (or was it already?) to activate already purchased and paid licenses?
- if it was already, can I ask for refund?
Try Firefox. Try OpenOffice. Try Amarok. Those are just three examples.
Trust me, I've tried (Damn Pepper Pad 3).
I'll believe it when netcraft confirms it.
Not only does it come out with a new major version more often, but very few people would argued that any of those new majors versions were a step back.
You just got troll'd!
Reactos may actually catch up providing a suitable replacement
If you observe the stats collected in this page of the article, one will see that Lenovo and Dell machines constitute a very high percentage of downgrades. However, the other manufacturers are starkly lower in comparison.
I can't help but believe that this is because Dell and Lenovo are the main suppliers of business laptops in the United States. It's a well-known fact that businesses are super slow at transitioning to new versions of anything significant, especially operating systems. If one is going to make this sensational claim, people in the server community might as well bicker about how adoption to Server 2008 is as slow as molasses right now.
This will naturally slow once Windows 7 comes to the forefront, but considering how the release dates between the two are so close (Vista came out in 2007, 7 is coming out late this year or next year) and how vastly improved 7 is to Vista, there's no net benefit for businesses to adopt to Vista on user machines.
It's not like this is new information; it's always been like this. The big difference is that Microsoft is now suffering from taking so goddamn long to release a "meh" operating system and then release the awesome so soon afterwards.
Screw Windows 7. It might be nice,... but.....
Virtualbox 3.0.0 just got released from Sun, which enables experimental OpenGL and DirectX inside the virtual machine.
If this version makes it into the next Ubuntu, I'll be quote happily playing all my games inside a virtual system.
Linux, here I come.
OSX is not $129. It's the cost of an Apple computer minus the alternatives. You can't put OSX on any computer and have it work without doing stuff that would probably only be legal on Linux.
I saw OS2 running on an ATM in a 3rd world country about 2 years ago. It had crashed and was rebooting.
Who will guard the guards?
The bugs have extended to 2008 server as well. I've had instances where I (logged in as an admin) could not modify the permissions on the root of a drive - even though UAC was disabled.
The fix is temporarily enabling UAC, setting the drive permissions, and then re-disabling UAC.
UAC is a piece of shit, and it even gets in your way when it is DISABLED.
That's a bug.
-ted
Upgrade people ! XP is a great OS. Windows 7 64 bit supporting over 4gb of ram running on a brand new Solid State Disk (5x faster). It feels like the future is meant to feel !!!!!
Psh - I've been using 2k Pro since it was released. Nine years later I'm just beginning to find a few things here and there that simply refuse to play nice with it (some online streaming video, the latest version of iTunes). It's so solid I could probably count the number of times it's crashed on me with one hand.
I'm about ready to upgrade, but since I can't get XP I guess I'll just wait for 7 and hope it lasts another 10 years.
The rehab hospital I worked at up until recently was still using mostly 2000sp4 except for some administrators' laptops (XP). I never saw any instances where I thought we needed to move up. Everything worked fine.
There's a perfect xkcd for my sig but I'm too lazy to look it up. sudo someone go find it.
Bummer about the expensive hardware dongle though.
I used to love XP.
Not anymore.
Once i installed Windows 7, i have no intention of going back to stupid XP.
Windows 7 for me is more stable, faster and less crashing.
Benefits:
1) Windows 7 installs faster and less intrusive than XP.
2) Windows 7 networking is far more advanced than the usual XP crap.
3) Display drivers crash do not cause a BSOD. Hell my nvidia beta driver crashed when i was running CoH:ToV. Windows 7 quietly told me the situation, restarted the driver and asked me if i wanted to roll back to previous version. I did.
4) Windows 7 is faster than XP in many ways. Multitasking, file operations, USB access, etc., all are much faster.
5) Device Manager shoots XP out of the water. I can pin point exact problems, roll back only those that are needed, and more.
For me, Windows 7 is a god-send. I haven't used Vista, but i love Windows 7 and would definitely pay good money for this.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Macs are cheaper than their dell equivalents once you add the price of Vista Ultimate + Virus Software & subscription.
64 bit audio recording.
Wow, professional sound cards can do 64 bits now. Now that's a good dynamic range... My card only has 24 bits, but they are enough for me.
People are buying vista, and then buying XP. Poor microsoft? Guess they'll never do that again?
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
OSX 10.6 will be $29 if you bought OSX 10.5 or a new machine that came with it... Microsoft should follow suit: Win7 is $29 if you paid $339 for Vista Ultimate
Ask Me About... The 80's!
Keeping up-to-date with OSX is still cheaper than Mirosoft.
Windows ME, 2000, XP, Vista, 7
vs
10.0 - 6
5 vs 7.
If you look at recent history (2005+) Mac has released 3 OSs (one of them to be sold for $30 if you upgrade) while Windows has released 2 (each around $270 to upgrade to the best version).
Sure, most people didn't upgrade to either ME or Vista, but that doesn't mean Redmond didn't try.
Win7 should cost -$125 if you had to buy Vista Ultimate
OSX is $129 when Vista is $300+ thats a giant WTF since OSX is so much better.
The geek always quotes retail list for the most expensive boxed version he can find.
The reality is the OEM Windows system bundle.
Users upgrade hardware and software when they feel that the time and the price is right. The Windows OS is usually a one-time purchase for the life of the system.
Some will always be looking - as I am looking - for a deal on a close-out or refurbished special that is a plausible candidate for the Win 7 upgrade at $50-$100.
If you are running XP on the Mac it is because your core apps haven't been ported to the Mac.
But most users spend their time engaged with applications - not with the OS.
They will never warm to the idea of trying to maintain two or three operating systems, software libraries and skill sets.
win7 should be FREE if your support group FORCED Vista Ultimate on you within a week of its release, whereupon SharePoint and Microsoft Project Server both broke, and you still had to do your job anyway, which is what happened to me...
Ask Me About... The 80's!
id prefer negative payment to free.
Well, I did receive an email from Bill Gates saying if I sent it on to everyone I knew, he would pay me. Another Microsoft lie... :-(
Ask Me About... The 80's!
When people want XP you give it to them. People demand a product you produce the supply.
When the company that controls the main product is a monopoly the goal is to keep soaking you for everything.
You don't need Vista. You don't even need Win7. In fact, there is absolutely no need for either, nor is there a need for XP. 90% of the people do 99% of the same things. Those things can be performed by Linux.
Stop dictating that the people using computers have to upgrade to a specific product. Let them use what they want.
This is so stupid that it even happens. It is just so incredibly insane. We've gotta end this somehow. End the monopoly and people will have free choice again. There's no benefit to Microsoft's monopoly. It isn't benefiting society in any way.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Oh, the DAC is still 24 bits, but the digital audio is converted to 64bits for processing so there are less distortion on the result. Did I get it right?
This is probably the same that the manual for Adobe Audition 1.5 suggests using 32bits for processing even if the result is then converted to 16 bits or whatever.
"2) Windows 7 networking is far more advanced than the usual XP crap." - by freedom_india (780002) on Tuesday June 30, @10:41PM (#28537951) Homepage
Are you aware of this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1206409&cid=27661983
?
AND, if so, on the HOSTS file bloat being caused by MS now in VISTA onwards (as well as the older 3-part "greek phalanx/zone defense" door lock (tcpip.sys + ipnat.sys), chain lock (Ipfltdrv.sys), & deadbolt lock (ipsec.sys) model of networking defense being 'phased-out' for a SINGLE PART ONLY "WFP" model) issues I noted therein...??
Thanks!
APK
P.S.=> I haven't gotten a WHY from MS even, 3x now asking them, even in their "Engineering Windows" blog last I looked... maybe you, or someone here, has an answer that sounds LOGICAL & SECURITY SOLID ENOUGH, to make sense (as well as promoting bloat in a HOSTS file)... apk
wanders through the street with a bell...
XPCollector: "ring ring ring, bring out your corpses..."
As Symbian UIQ died going chapter 11, Sony Ericsson mysteriously stopped offering application and firmware updates for UIQ handsets like P1i.
So while browsing Windows 7 MS forums, I found a desperate owner of P1i like me looking for a way to sync/backup his phone under Windows 7. I simply suggested getting ''XP mode'' from MS as the application and drivers he tries to run will not just work, they will also effect stability of OS.
What I mean is, XP will stay there almost forever because of reasons like these. Oh BTW, a MS engineer marked his own answer which is basically as template making no sense (contact vendor for update) as ''answer'' to the issue. They get bonus from these? Ballmer should check.
NN
Any freshly installed Windows PC will run faster than the one that has been around for couple of months. And it is not simply a matter of fragmentation, it's also registry clutter, pre-fetch, the fact that Windows records what executables you use the most and it computes optimal disk layout based on that etc, shuffling stuff around on disk, slowing other things, performance degradation that comes when you have lots of files in a folder etc.
In general I have not noticed this kind of slowdown with OS X. I have been running my OS X installation for year and a half now, and I have not noticed any slowdown. I find OS X and Linux to be much more resilient to user using it.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
I tried Windows 7, it was supposed to work on my machine and it did, assuming that I never wanted to listen to any sounds or connect to the Internet. The drivers do not exist for my WiFi or on board sound. Other than those two faults it ran flawlessly. I'll keep XP until I have to upgrade, I was the same with Win98SE as well.
Calvin:Do you believe in the devil? Hobbes:I'm not sure man needs the help.
I just got my desktop back up and running after being dead for half a year. Burnt a Win7 RC1 disc on my laptop and went to install on the desktop since I planned on getting Win7 anyways. Turns out Win7 hates my DVD drive (Samsung SH-M522C). Updated the firmware on the drive, still hates it. Guess I'll have to wait until I can get a new DVD drive... pisses me off because I loved Win7 on my laptop. It ran so much smoother than Vista, and now I'm used to all the UI tweaks :(
I installed the Windows 7 RC on my 2 year old gaming desktop. Noted: I skipped Vista on my home machines. These are my observations of 7.
1.) The system boots faster with identical applications loaded
2.) The interface is much snappier in day to day operations - the layout of menus, shortcuts, drives, and peripherals is more intuitive. *Can't give enough praise for the recent files used under each program (big time saver).
3.) Programs load quicker than XP and use of programs feels snappier.
4.) The Task Bar is what it always should have been. The new changes are extremely useful in day to day usage. I especially like the preview box of open windows in groups while pinned.
5.) Windows Explorer is light years ahead of XP. File management is so much easier now.
6.) USB support feels better. I'm getting higher reads/writes off existing usb keys/hard disk drives.
7.) The interface is nicer looking - I feel like I'm using a modern computer system. I really like the auto size when dragging windows to the side of the screen or top.
8.) No crashing or lockups as of yet. The RC has been rock solid (I wish I had been able to test the beta, people say it was even quicker).
Microsoft sold me on Windows 7. I purchased two copies of the upgrade to home premium for $49 each. I don't know why people say it's outrageous for the OS. I'm not sure you're using the same Windows 7 I am, but it's worth every penny MS is asking.
Noted: I'm an avid Ubuntu user as well.
My problem with Vista was mainly to do with the new UI. I found it cluttered and confining, with fiddly little details that frankly made my skin crawl (those little triangles next to folders M$ nicked from the Mac), and these are still evident in Win7; however I find Win7 far less claustrophobic. I like XP's Classic theme, which gives me the feeling of a nice, open space with no funky pictures or "helpful" UI tricks like exploding menus or windows fading in and out.
Those UI novelties, like sound schemes which spit Simpsons sound bites when you minimize windows, are cute for about five minutes then get really old really fast. I already saw XP as a feature-creeped version of Win2000, but Vista/Win7 are OTT in that regard.
Who is this delectable creature with an insatiable love of the dead?
Service packs are not crap, but the others very well could be.
Drivers - Big culprit, you have to jump through hoops to get JUST THE DRIVERS these days. For gaming video cards you could understand the need for an app to help configure it, but modems and sound cards? They all come bundled with run-on-startup crapware and registration nagware. Usually avoidable or fixable, but this isn't obvious to the average Joe. HP installs a rich ecosystem of crapware on a system along with the printer drivers. You can find driver-only packages on their website.
Office suites - both MS office and OO.org come with quickstarters that simply chuck hunks of the suite into RAM to help speed up launch times. Startup time++, available RAM--, paging++, but ooh it launches 3 seconds faster the first time you run it, YAY! Also Adobe Reader is a big culprit here - any PDF reader that comes with a quickstarter is way too big, designed by a jackass or both. Plus Adobe Reader loads plugins for your browser and some email clients. Weeee!
Compression programs - these usually aren't bad, although back when I last used WinZip it ran some apps on startup. You're safe with 7-Zip.
Media codecs - another big culprit, they often come with startup apps you don't need, their own little media players and drop a metric shitload of DLLs all over the place. I only install codecs (and just the codecs) if the system will be used for video editing, otherwise I use VLC - problem solved.
CD-burning software: Roxio is the only nasty one I know of, but I haven't used anything besides Infrarecorder on Windows in years.
iTunes and Quicktime are horrendous bloatware, this is Apple's fault. It wouldn't be such a problem if you manually pruned out the unnecessary startup entries but I'd definitely suggest using something else to get songs on your iPod.
If you don't play games on your PC consider installing Linux (Ubuntu is super easy to use) or even getting a Mac. As a general rule the only thing you *NEED* Windows for is gaming.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
If you support users on Multiple OS's is is a pain.
2000/XP find add/remove and click on it.
Vista ???? what is it called again ????
To do support you have to know what the text is labeled, what other text is around it, other icons and visual cues. Either that or you have to have 3 computers or a computer with 2 VMs.
There are plenty of people out there over the phone you cant tell to bring up the control panel and type "add" in the search box. They will be in their web browser or something looking at Bing by that point, as soon as you say "search" they will leave the control panel and go to Internet Explorer.
vi +
--
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
THAT is an excellent sig, my friend - well done.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Maybe it's smart to be cheap? What moron would pay good money for an inferior OS?
I have XP on my desktop and Vista on my laptop... Desktop is 2yrs old (amd64/2gb ram) and the laptop is a brand new toshiba (amdx2 64/ 3gb ram). I did a simple benchmark test running Fritz 10 benchmark (chess software that I use for position analysis). XP benchmark was 7.9 (compared to 1.0 on a p4 1ghz)... Vista was 3.4???!!!??? note that this benchmark doesn't include video etc... it benchmarks how fast the analysis runs. This shows that XP is over TWICE as fast on 2yr old slower hardware than a brand new Vista machine. After spending a whole day doing tweaks to get Vista to feel somewhat responsive, I was able to get my Fritz 10 benchmark to 3.9... Still pathetic. I certainly hope Win7 is far faster because Vista is a performance DOG for anyone running performance critical applications. This is the #1 reason why I tell people to stick with XP as long as possible.... Those who have to upgrade I recommend two different paths... if they are tech dummies, I suggest buying a Mac (something I have NEVER done before) or if they have a clue, I recommend using Linux. Ubuntu on the Vista laptop flies, yet Vista is just barely usable.
The problem with XP, NT 4.0 and benefits of NT 3.5 and Vista is the GDI running in UserSpace versus kernel.
Up until NT 3.5 the GDI was run under user space. Hence if the driver crashed, you don't get a BSOD which signifies a kernel panic.
The reason why Windows GDI was placed in userspace was because NT 3.5 was also capable of supporting other UI like POSIX UI(which never came to be), and OS/2 UI. So theoritically you could run the NT kernel on a OS/2 GUI or even POSIX GUI if available.
With its infinite wisdom and going against the advice of Helen Custer and NT Architect, Microsoft threw the GDI into Kernel for quicker response times (official reason). The real reason was OS/2 was licked and Microsoft wanted to be a monopoly (without knowing that EU will kick its ass in future). So it threw out POSIX developments (it still remains in basic limited form to be of any real use, much like a Bank's IVR).
This brought in a rash of new problems: Driver developers were not exactly "Code Complete Quality" material. Hell, they were worse than Power Builder programmers. (all offense intended. So sue me PB programmers)
A small freemem(*) call here, a malloc(*) pointer there, and before you know, you had a memory leak, and executable code in Kernel scratching up the wall for a non-existent memory address space.
WTF was the kernel to do? Allow a badly written driver to corrupt the system more? Nope. Not even Microsoft was that stupid. So, the kernel took down the entire system with a BSOD to signify that somewhere something crashed and that the OS cannot recover unless i rebooted the system entirely.
There started the jokes about BSOD, screensavers etc.
Microsoft was tired of these jib jabs, and also since processor power had increased from 33 Mhz on a 80386 to 2048 MHz on an IA64, it started to move back the GDI to user space from kernel in Vista.
But then, this being Microsoft, it did a half-ass job anyway without talking to the driver developers.
Of course no developer worth his salt would read MSDN to know about the details of privilege de-escalation and re-escalation: that was for the n00bs. A better way to release the driver into the wild and wait for some poor unsuspecting soul to scream.... which is what exactly nvidia, ATI, Xerox, Canon and AMD did.
What they didn't realize was that users were paying customers (surprise!) and that Microsoft wielded had a bigger stick.
So all these device makers and driver makers got fcuked front and back.
Now, having experienced the pain of such fcuking by Bubba (Microsoft), they made sure their drivers were well tested for Windows 7.
Which is why Windows 7 looks nicer, works better and is more crash proof than XP.
Hell, i even upgraded by nvidia display driver yesterday without rebooting.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
No. I didn't mod you down. I can't post and mod in same discussion.
Plus i make it a point to mod upwards only and not downwards. My threshold is set too high to see AC comments.
So obviously i couldn ot have seen it in first place.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Calm down. You are taking this seriously.
To reiterate again, slashdot doesn't permit me to post AND mod in same discussion. So i didn't mod you down.
Secondly it is ironical now: Iam posting from Safe Mode under WIndows 7 64-bit because the latest nVidia driver screwed up my system badly.
Even Guru3d Driver Sweeper can't solve it.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
I use and recommend the free version of Foxit reader.